MARK EITZEL @ THE LINDA, 7/22/09

By Michael Eck
Special to The Times Union
ALBANY – Call him an American Jacques Brel with his zipper down.
Mark Eitzel, who first performed in Albany 20 years ago with his pioneering band, American Music Club, returned to town Wednesday night for a wonderful concert of worrisome songs.
What made AMC pioneering was Eitzel’s unflinching vision of another America – one populated by drunks, whores, addicts and outsiders, all of whom had stories to tell.
Sonically, the band was capable of sheer noise and great subtlety, but even those poles couldn’t contain Eitzel, who recorded intermittently with other players and finally went solo in 1994 (although AMC has reconvened a number of times since).
Wednesday’s performance, though, was solo of a different stripe, with Eitzel crooning to accompaniment of pianist Marc Capelle.
The program, dubbed “Mark Eitzel Performs American Music Club,” actually drew from all over Eitzel’s career, stepping back as far as 1987’s harrowing “Nightwatchman,” which indeed was offered at that Albany appearance at QE2 in 1989.
Eitzel made the song seem even darker by telling the tale behind it – of watching a friend slowly fade to black in a hospital room over a period of months.
Like the late, great Townes Van Zandt, Eitzel leavens the heaviness by being silly between songs.
When notified that his fly was down, he covered it with a WAMC sticker, courtesy of the Linda’s parent station (which, he teased, took its call letters from his band’s name). And he even cracked himself up during Kris Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times,” while knocking Capelle’s trite, “twinkly” piano fills.
Often Capelle’s accompaniment was minimal and spot-on, but it did go for baroque here and there, particularly on the encore of “Johnny Mathis’ Feet.”
Eitzel opened the show with “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” (did he know Tony Bennett was at Tanglewood on Tuesday?) and he talked plenty about his hometown, and its supposed lack of soul.
But Eitzel said he loves the ghosts that inhabit the city, and it seems he can find soul where he needs to, just not in the places where most of us do.
“Patriot’s Heart” and “Windows on The World,” for example addressed the 9/11 attacks in oblique, powerful ways.
And songs like “Last Harbor” and “The Thorn in My Side is Gone” addressed the inadequacies of love which such candor and grace as to make pain beautiful.
What was most fulfilling about Wednesday’s show, however, wasn’t the weight and melody of the songs. Yes, Eitzel is a heckuva writer, but, God, what a singer.
The Goffin/King classic “No Easy Way Down” was staggering, with mic technique that would make Mathis proud. And his hilarious, yet terrifically poignant take of Billy Paul’s 1972 hit “Me and Mrs. Jones” — delivered from a more personal standpoint as “Me and Mr. Jones” – was ironic, iconic and incredible.
In 20 years time, we’ll all be ready for another dose of Eitzel – it takes that long to recover.